Thousands of UK workers to take part in four-day week trial

theguardian.com:

More than 3,000 workers at 60 companies across Britain will trial a four-day working week, in what is thought to be the biggest pilot scheme to take place anywhere in the world.

Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a Manchester-based medical devices firm, and a fish and chip shop in Norfolk.

It comes as the push for companies to adopt a shorter working week – crucially with no loss of pay while aiming for higher productivity – gains momentum as a way of improving working conditions.

The pilot is being run by academics at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Boston College in the US, in partnership with the campaign group 4 Day Week Global, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign and the Autonomy thinktank.

Launching the trial to examine how such employment patterns might work at a broad range of companies across the economy, the participation of 3,000 workers means it is larger than a previous pilot in Iceland by Reykjavík city council and the national government that included more than 2,500 workers.

The research comes after the Covid pandemic led many people and companies to re-examine their working patterns, with a marked rise in hybrid and flexible practices that eschew the standard nine-to-five, five-day work week.

Joe O’Connor, the chief executive of 4 Day Week Global, said there was no way to “turn the clock back” to the pre-pandemic world. “Increasingly, managers and executives are embracing a new model of work which focuses on quality of outputs, not quantity of hours,” he said. “Workers have emerged from the pandemic